This he must do, not merely because his readers would
expect such literal accuracy from him, but because to himself that
narrative was the very truth which he was, undertaking to deliver.
The additions which his fancy or inspiration might supply must be
restrained by this severe law, that they should be such as to aid the
reader's imagination to conceive how the event took place. They must
by no means be suffered to alter, disfigure, traduce the substance or
the letter of the revelation. This is what Milton has done. He has
told the story of creation in the very words of Scripture. The whole
of the seventh book, is little more than a paraphrase of a few verses
of Genesis. What he has added is so little incongruous with his
original, that most English men and women would probably have some
difficulty in discriminating in recollection the part they derive from
Moses, from that which they have added from the paraphrast. In Genesis
it is the serpent who tempts Eve, in virtue of his natural wiliness.
In Milton it is Satan who has entered into the body of a serpent, and
supplied the intelligence. Here indeed Milton was only adopting a
gloss, as ancient at least as the Book of Wisdom (ii.
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